The Wayfinding Project
Friday, August 18, 2006 at 5:08pm 4 comments (last by greg Dewar)
Not long ago, Steve over at san francisco cityscape got in touch with me about giving our local transit signs a makeover with another friend of his.
We're frustrated no end by maps that are often out of date (sometimes by decades!), many times very confusing and recently a $500,000 connectivity study was published confirming this is a very high barrier to using transit.
We've had quite a few conversations both on- and off-line over how some simple, fast and rather cheap fixes could make a huge improvement. A few months ago I'd left a comment about doing something akin Design Eye for the Usability Guy.
Now we're putting our money where our mouths are with The Wayfinding Project.
We've started with a top ten list of improvements that can be made exclusively through improving signs and maps that would make it easier to find your way around and transfer between our numerous transit systems.
4 Comments
jesse Saturday, August 19, 2006 at 12:39am
I join in on Eric's comment on a job well done. The wayfinding project is a success, and hopefully will prove to be a catalyst for meaningful change. Are you listening, Bart officials?
Rob N Tuesday, August 22, 2006 at 9:53am
Wow! I'm really impressed! It's inspiring to see you coming up with a concise list of things you want to see changes, goals, and implementations. It's brilliant! I should do the same!
greg Dewar Wednesday, September 6, 2006 at 6:05pm
this is a great idea! plus they really need to update the MUNI maps in some bus stops....a lot of them are WAY WAY outta date too!
Eric C. Saturday, August 19, 2006 at 12:14am
Jamison,
I just found my way over here from Cityscape. A round of applause to you and Steve for all the work. I caught the post a bit late, so by the time I read it, most of any additional points I might have mentioned were already raised. It was great to see this stuff spelled out, especially with the highly effective existing vs. proposed images. Looking at the proposed images, they seem so natural, you wonder why it wasn't just done that way in the first place.
And, perhaps best of all, these changes are indeed quite a bit less expensive than all those new Metro lines and fanciful subway tunnels we were talking about some months back. :-)
I think my favorite line from the feature was, regarding BART/Muni stations: "The same damned map?"
Anyway, thanks for putting in the time and effort towards producing a great project. I really hope that someone in charge is paying attention.